Introduction of the Corner & What’s to Come

Posted by DetectiveEstes in Detective Estes' Corner      No comments

Mar
13

Hello All – This is my first post on my new blog. I thought I’d introduce myself and the blog. I established a non-profit corporation in 2007 called Police Education Institute.  If you read the entire website, you’ll learn a good bit about me and what I expect to do as a non-profit corporation.

Now, as to “Detective Estes Corner”.  The reason for the blog is so I can have a little fun with writing.   Another reason is so I can extend some of my knowledge and interest in various subjects to others.  In my lifetime, I’ve learned a good bit about different subjects.  Some of this learning is useful, some useless.  I’ll try to keep the useless information out of here.

A good thing about this blog is the reader can reply to me.  Agree or disagree – it’s up to you.  Feel free to critique the blog, the subject, or the writing.  I believe criticism is a good learning tool.

I will be writing mostly about the following: police work, guns, music, maybe cooking & maybe art.  I know a good bit about police work, guns and music and not so much about art & cooking.  The entertainment written here is not specifically for police officers.  There will be many stories about things I think might be interesting to others as well.  I enjoy camping, scouting, cooking over a campfire, photography, driving and motorcycles.  There may be reviews of things I’ve used in various activities or I am using now.

I expect to write a lot about police work & investigations as I have done more of that than anything else in life.  Various subjects will be discussed.  Things I liked most about police work are investigations, arrests, search warrants and interviews.  Lest you think that means only detectives, NOT SO!!!  Investigations are what all cops do!! Readers should be aware that I retired from the Arlington County Police Department in 2010.

Arrests are what cops do as well.  I like stories, so I might throw in a story every so often.  These stories will be about things I’ve participated in, or others close to me have done.  If the story is about a myself or officers I know, then I might critique it for officer safety, or learning techniques.  If I do not know the officers involved then I don’t critique.  I do, however, like hearing about cops making great arrests, and doing a great job at some activities.  I may include a link to a story like that in the blog so others can see an outstanding job by the police.  It’s best to see it here because the mainstream media will never show the police doing good.

Search warrants were nearly my favorite police activity.  Search warrants can be confusing to nearly all police officers.  I think examples of search warrants shown here would be helpful to officers.  There will be examples sometimes of search warrants along with helpful hints.  This may ease some trepidation that officers/detectives have about writing search warrants.  I’ve known detectives who were so intimidated by search warrants that they would deliberately punt their case to another detective, or suspend the case so they wouldn’t have to write one!   I taught many detectives and officers how to write a search warrant.  Fact:  Anyone who can verbally articulate an arrest warrant can write the articulation needed for a search warrant.  And in the same amount of time.  We will look at search warrant examples.  If you have problems with search warrants, maybe this will help.

Interviewing is another favorite activity of mine.  I’ve interviewed a lot of people in 37 years of being the police.  This is another activity that many police officers dread, or are at least very unsure of.  I hope to remedy some of that here.  I teach a class named; “The 30 Minute Interview”.  I’ve taught this class to nearly a thousand police officers and detectives and security officers as well.  Most of these officers were uniform officers. The class is targeted toward uniform officers.  Sometimes I’ll put up a suggestion here that I think would be helpful in police interviewing.  I’ve had many officers contact me and let me know they used techniques taught in this interview course and they worked every time.

I think I’ve gone on long enough  for today.  These topics might keep me busy for a lifetime. I hope so.  I also hope they will be interesting to readers and we can have an ongoing conversation here about various subjects.